The 2013 edition of the SPARKcon iPhone app is now live on the app store!
Download it today!
Blog
SPARKCon 2013 is coming!
Keep your eyes peeled on the App Store! The 2013 version of the SPARKCon iPhone app will be available soon!
Obsessed with Instagram
As a designer I take a LOT of photographs. I’ve downloaded and tried a lot of photos apps over the past few years. Although there are a ton of great ones out there (Hipstamatic, Diptic, ShakeItPhoto to name a few), I became obsessed with Instagram and have Facebook and tweeted my love for the app several times.
Instagram shot of Screenstagram screen saver on my MacBook Pro
I love the app so much that in April I co-curated a show in our Designbox gallery called “Greetings from Raleigh” which featured professional shots of Raleigh and tons of Instagram photos from local Raleighites.
There are a lot of cool products that are being made with Instagram’s API. Recently, I found a service called Postagram that prints (and ships!) postcards of your Instagram photos from the web or your iPhone (I am seriously considering using Postagram postcards for my Christmas cards this year). I placed an order and when my postcard arrived, it was high-quality, printed on thick, glossy paper and had perforated edges around the photo so the person that receives the postcard can pop out the 3 x 3 inch photo and have it as a keepsake.
Instagram gallery show at Designbox
I’ll keep posting new and exciting Instagram services when I find them. In the meantime, check out the app, the postcards and the screensaver so you can obsess about Instagram as much as I do. Please let me know if you find other Instagram products by leaving a comment. Instagram-on, friends!
[really_simple_share]
Trends
Hellooooooo. I’m ecstatic to have the new e design website launched and have this much-needed space to talk about why design makes me so happy and how I believe it’s an essential part of our lives. I hope you enjoy my insights, random inspiration and trends. Hence the name of this blog. Happy creativity!
[really_simple_share]
What does your business need?
THE ANSWER: Design.
Growth, we all have learned, is no longer automatic. The past has less to teach us than we need to know. Consumers are jaded, markets fragmented and disposable dollars scarce. Risk is everywhere, and pressure produces rigidity, making it difficult to try new things. More than ever, time is our enemy.
This, as every visionary knows, is a rare moment of opportunity: one that rewards creativity and compensates companies that have learned to cultivate the brilliance of individuals and instill an effective process for innovation in their corporate cultures.
Despite commonly held beliefs, real invention is rarely the terminus of a carefully developed brief. It begins before the assignment is written, and is inevitably the difference between efforts that lead to meaningful new ideas and those that produce derivative results. It is an ability to identify inchoate opportunities and see openings where others can’t. Invention never should be saved for problem solving. It should be engaged first to recognize the most rewarding problems to solve. It is not for the faint of heart or narrow-minded.
Happily, we have a plan.
It’s called design.
Design is a profession based on conception: on helping to define an opportunity, then develop a solution that will fulfill it. Subsequently, design includes the identification and management of the team that will bring it to life, whether it is a product, communication, event or place.
This information has been reprinted with permission from AIGA. AIGA encourages anyone interested to download the booklet “What Every Business Needs” and use it to increase the level of respect and understanding for design.
The booklet includes a 12 step process by which businesses can create value and market demand through innovation. It is done in partnership with designers.
If you would like to discus how e design can help your company, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@erinedesign.com.
[really_simple_share]
Who says print is dead?
8Faces is a new magazine for devotees of typography. That’s us!
The more I post (and you read) these blog entries, the more you will realize how obsessed I am with type. This magazine feeds that obsession and I’ve studied both issues they’ve released from cover to cover. Several times.
This is only the second issues of this beautiful magazine and I did a happy dance when it arrived. It’s printed on heavy stock with a foil-blocked cover, a small run of 2500 limited editions, and is a true collector’s item.
The magazine has one core question at its heart — if you could only use eight typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose? — and poses this (and many others) to eight leading designers from the fields of web design, print design, illustration, and of course type design itself.
8 Faces is available internationally but each issues sells out quick. Stay up to date with the latest info at 8faces.com. I’ll keep you posted when I hear rumblings of another issue coming.
This makes me way more happy than it probably should. Hooray for type!
[really_simple_share]
